Posts Tagged ‘World Registry of Marine Species’

We seem to have a compulsion to name every species that we notice. Whatever the reasons, such knowledge is increasingly important to us.

For example, is there currently a new, 6th Mass Extinction underway and caused by us? To know how quickly species are going extinct, we have to know what species actually exist.

Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction The Sixth Extinction – a terrific and disturbing book (grist.org)

This is not always easy, and trying to identify the species that live in our oceans has been particularly difficult. There we have mostly cared about species of commercial interest or unusually large or exotic species, yet most marine species are small, cryptic, buried, and/or in deep water.

And other questions about marine communities also now absorb us: Are marine coastal communities shifting to higher latitudes as the sea around them warms? How does over-fishing, eliminating the top predators, restructure communities? How much does coastal development and pollution modify coastal communities? How are changes in sea currents and temperatures affecting prey species for migrating fish, marine mammals, sea turtles and sea birds?

To even start to answer questions like these, questions whose answers are critical to our own long-term stability and well-being, we need to know what species actually exist, and we need to have confidence in the accuracy of their identification. This requires a lot of energy, patience and expertise.

Enter WoRMS, the fine acronym for the World Registery of Marine Species. For the past few decades scientists have been confirming the identity of all 420,000 marine species that have been described as species since the 1700s. 190,400 turned out to be duplicates – leaving 228,450 legitimate species.

The rough periwinkle Littorina saxatilis lives in the high intertidal of temperate rocky shores, and was known by 113 different names: now just by one (aphotomarine.com)

Of the legitimate species, 18,000 are fish, 816 are squid, 93 are whales and dolphins, the list goes on and on. Since 2008, 1000 new species have been added to the lists, including 122 species of shark and rays.

The Australian Humpbacked Dolphin Sousa saholensis was recently discovered (marinespecies.org)

That all sounds impressive – but marine scientists estimate that between half a million and 2 million marine species have yet to be described.

We obviously are not going to describe everything before it goes it extinct, though it seems a pity not to know what we’re losing. What WoRMS is offering us though is reliable data, knowledge we can use with confidence as we try to conserve the marine communities that exist and as we try to understand and perhaps mitigate the impact of the global changes that are upon us.

WoRMS is a huge asset. We need to ensure a new generation of experts will be trained to keep the work going.

There is no substitute for accurate knowledge.
For evidence.

The Ruby Seadragon, a new species of a very odd fish that lives between Australia and new Guinea (marinespecies.org)